Speech recognition systems have become important tools in certain work environments. In particular, environments with considerable amounts of dictation and transcription, as in the medical and legal professions, benefit from the speed and cost savings of speech recognition software and advancements. However, speech recognition engines are often generic and not initially customized for specific work environments.
Often, the speech recognition engine employed by a company or institution does not fully address the requirements of the working environment. For example, a medical facility needs a speech recognition system capable of identifying and transcribing the names of the doctors at the site, words not typically included in the general speech recognition input files.
Also, documents generated by a speech recognition engine are not always consistent with a desired format. For example, physicians may dictate dates in many ways and a general speech recognition engine transcribes the dictation verbatim. However, the medical facility's document management system requires the date in a particular standardized date format.
Conventionally, specialized administrators or human speech recognition agents have customized the speech recognition input files for a particular site. These input files control the number and types of words that the speech recognition engine recognizes and transcribes. These input files also control the format and appearance of the output or text file from the speech recognition engine.
Unfortunately, the conventional approach to modifying input files and customizing the speech recognition engine for a particular site, like a hospital, is a time-intensive and expensive process. The special administrator updates the input files by including specific new words one at a time. Furthermore, the special administrator usually has no expertise in the words being added to customize the speech recognition engine. For example, when customizing a speech recognition engine for a hospital, the special administrator's expertise is in computer programming and not in prescription drugs. Conversely, while choosing hospital personnel familiar with medical terms and hospital jargon could rectify this, conventional systems do not facilitate this process for personnel without computer programming expertise.